New Xbox Apps

New Xbox Apps Inbound!

Be prepared to spend a lot more time on the sofa. Xbox has just announced 40 new apps for Xbox LIVE that threaten to make the console more everyday than even gamers had previously imagined.

Rolling out across the globe starting now through to Spring next year, several of the new apps launch this week in the UK, including – God help us all – Karaoke, Napster and SkyDrive. Unsurprisingly, Karaoke gives you access to more than 8,000 tracks, with your Avatar performing the song on stage on-screen while you sing. You sing through your headset or wireless mic and can use SmartGlass to play/stop/pause, browse the database and lyrics or to add songs to the playlist. Songs don’t require any download and will playback immediately via streaming.

Napster music library offers millions of tracks to listen to through subscription, while SkyDrive is Microsoft’s cloud-based storage for files, photos and videos, which you can now view through the television. Full details of the new apps can be found here. And yes, Sainsbury’s really is on there. Food through your console?! Go to the sofa. Now.

Got A Samsung Galaxy SIII? Do New Tricks

Have you found yourself attached to a rather clever Samsung Galaxy SIII smartphone? Are you utterly baffled by all the stuff it can do other than calls, texts and the internet? Good. You’re about to be even more baffled. Samsung has just announced a host of new tricks coming to the SIII with what it’s calling the “Premium Update”, alongside the phone’s latest Android 4.1 (or Jelly Bean) operating system update.

Those tricks include it knowing when you plug in headphones that you want to listen to something, so it’ll fire up the music player; “Multi Window” has two apps running on-screen simultaneously (mind: blown); new camera function “Best Face” takes five quick shots and lets you select the best face from any of person in any of those five shots and combine them in one ultimate picture, while “Easy Mode” puts your five most commonly used widgets on the home screen if you’re too lazy to go searching. There’s also a host of other developments for you to be dazzled by.

Check out all of the updates via the world’s dullest YouTube videos here and here. Or spare yourself the misery and if you’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S III, just get the Premium Suite and go mad.

Twitter Unleashes Photo FiltersTwitter isn’t Instagram. But after simmering tensions, the former BFFs are ring-fencing what belongs to them (that’ll be us, the users) and drawing battle lines. Instagram has pulled support for Twitter Cards, meaning pictures no longer magically appear in tweets as they once did, and Twitter has reacted this week by releasing photo filters all of its own. Tit. Tat. You get the picture (or rather, you don’t, as they case now is).

Tweet a photo in the new updated Twitter app and there are now eight filters to choose from including black and white, vignette and vintage (so far, so Instagram), plus move, scale, cropping and auto-enhance. So pretty much just like Instagram, then. You can see the full details in the official announcement here.

Not wanting to be left out, Instagram has also released an app update this week with a few new tricks, reminding us all that we needn’t abandon the hugely popular photo-sharing service just yet. Particularly as it’s only just gotten around to rolling out long-overdue web profiles for its users.

How this battle royale between the social – social! – giants will play out is anyone’s guess, but in the meantime, please do continue to take pictures of plane wings from plane windows at 37,000ft, sunrise/sunset, pets, food, drunk nights out, graffiti and shadows of yourself using either. Guilty as charged.

Talk To The Hand (With Bluetooth Gloves)As it’s cold anyway, you should probably be wearing gloves and as you should probably be wearing gloves, you may as well make them a fancy Bluetooth pair that not only keep your mitts toasty but also double up as a phone.

For £50, Firebox will run you off a pair of these fetching hand-warmers which wirelessly sync with your mobile phone. From there on, thanks to a speaker in the thumb and a mic in the little finger, they’ll allow you to take incoming calls simply by hitting the glove’s green “answer” button and then talking into your hand doing that universal “Call me!” hand-sign. Just like the Christine Bleakley lookalike is doing in the picture above. If you don’t want a pair, there’s absolutely something profoundly wrong with you – they’re already something of a worldwide hit (the US and Russia) and have even appeared on ITV’s This Morning with our very own Pip Schofield. Get yours in black or (Schofield) grey, with deliveries expected in time for Christmas.